During the Civil War, women performed many roles. They worked in factories and ran farms and businesses. Women were spies and at least 300 women disguised themselves as men and served as soldiers. Women were hospital directors, doctors and nurses. These included Annie L. Reeder, whose grave is in Bordentown Cemetery, Bordentown, New Jersey. According to the inscription on her gravestone, she was a volunteer nurse at the Battle of Gettysburg, July 4, 1863. (The fourth line on her gravestone reads: “VOL. NURSE BAT OF GETTS”)

Arabella Barlow, a civil war nurse from Somerville, contracted typhus and died in the service of her country on July 27, 1864. In 1996, this marker was placed over the grave of Arabella Wharton Griffith Barlow, in Old Somerville Cemetery, Somerville, New Jersey. The inscription reads: “Born February 29, 1824 in Somerville, New Jersey.” Arabella Barlow served as a nurse during the Peninsula, Antietam and Gettysburg campaigns. In 1861, she married General Francis Barlow, whom she twice nursed back to life from grievous wounds. She nursed at hospital sites at Fredericksburg, Port Royal, White House and City Point “with no thought but for those who were suffering and dying all around her . . . ”